📅 First submission window: April-May 2026
We are currently preparing for our launch. Members who join now will receive early access to our Three-Act Gothic guide and be ready to submit when the window opens.
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About Black Fox Review
Founded in 2026, Black Fox Review publishes gothic fiction four times a year. Each issue is a collection of stories that honour the tradition of the gothic while pushing it towards new, strange territories. We are particularly interested in the spaces between: between fact and fiction, between the living and the dead, between the promise and its keeping.
Black Fox Review is published by Matatabi Press, an officially registered Japanese publishing house (Japan Publisher Registration No. 910554). The journal is distributed globally and available as EPUB and print editions at at Barnes & Noble (US), Waterstones (UK), Kinokuniya (Asia), Ernster (Luxembourg), Bokus (Sweden), Bol (Netherlands), Indigo Chapters (Canada), Thriftbooks, AbeBooks, Amazon (Worldwide), Goodreads, The NILE (academic), and independent bookshops worldwide. Black Fox Society offers an annual membership for readers who want to support the work and receive each issue as it appears, plus exclusive access to our narratological guides.
✦ SUBSCRIBE
Join The Black Fox Society for $7 /year (¥1,000)
Four fixed-format EPUB issues / interactive PDF issues · Free submissions · Three-Act Gothic guide included
✦ PURCHASE
EPUB: $5.00
Print: $16.99
Published by Matatabi Press (Japan Publisher Registration No. 910554) · Distributed globally · Available Barnes & Noble (US), Waterstones (UK), Kinokuniya (Asia), Ernster (Luxembourg), Bokus (Sweden), Bol (Netherlands), Indigo Chapters (Canada), Thriftbooks, AbeBooks, Amazon (Worldwide), Goodreads, The NILE (academic), and independent bookshops worldwide.
✦ SUBMIT
First window: April-May 2026
Then Jul-Aug, Oct-Nov, Jan-Feb 2027
Members submit free · Non-members: $3F
Submission Guidelines Summary
✧ What We're Looking For
Black Fox Review seeks gothic fiction that unsettles, transforms, and lingers. We are particularly drawn to stories that:
Blend the historical and the supernatural
Explore guilt, memory, and unkept promises
Feature liminal spaces: thresholds, ruins, gardens at dusk
Treat the gothic not as decoration but as a way of seeing
✧ Quick Facts
Length: 500-3,000 words (sample story is just under 3,000)
Format: .doc, .docx, or .pdf
Reading periods (2026): Apr-May, Jul-Aug, Oct-Nov, Jan-Feb 2027
Response time: Within 8 weeks
Payment: Contributor's copy + $10 USD
Fees: Free for members · $3 for non-members
The Black Fox Society
An annual membership for readers and writers who believe in the strange, the shadowed, and the true.
MEMBERS RECEIVE
Four fixed-format EPUB issues / interactive PDF issues annually (value $20) (first issue Summer 2026)
Early Submission Access: Two weeks before the general public
Free submissions to all reading periods
Early access to each issue
Invitations to virtual readings
Immediate access: Three-Act Gothic guide with narratological analysis of the sample story
MEMBERSHIP FEE
$7 / year
(approximately ¥1,000 / €6.50)
The Foxes of Spetchley Park
by John McLean
A sample from Issue One · Just under 3,000 words (the upper end of our range)
The turn onto Froxmere Road had been George Croft’s choke point for seven years. Three pints for courage at The Old Chequers, then the walk down Church Road. If he could make it past the turn, he could make it home.
A door slammed as George passed the village shop. His body betrayed him; a spasm carved deep into him by three years in the trenches. Fifteen. He had been fifteen when he lied his way into the war. It had not made a man of him. It had burnt the boy out of him and left an open void where a slamming door could shatter all but his feeble will to live.
His head snapped down, chin tucking into his chest. His shoulders hunched and his body curled inward, bracing for a blast, not a closing door. His heart thumped against his ribs: run, hide, survive. The breath froze in his lungs.
For a dizzying second, the present vanished, replaced by the chemical tang of gas, the shriek of a shell, the suck of mud.
INCOMING. GET DOWN. / It’s just a door, George. / The smell of his own shit in the trench. / Breathe. / Tom’s eyes, wide and empty. / You’re home. It’s 1926.
He forced his eyes open, unclenched his jaw. The world seeped back in, wrong and too quiet. You are in Worcestershire. The only thing in the air is barley dust.
From her window, Old Mrs. Moresley watched George’s performance with weary familiarity. The Croft boy having one of his turns was as much a part of the evening as the church bell. She shook her head. “Pathetic,” she muttered. But this time was different. His knees buckled. He fell onto all fours. A low, wretched sob escaped him: a raw, animalistic sound of pure shame. Tears streamed down onto his clenched fists. Mrs. Moresley’s cheeks burned. Ashamed to have taken pleasure in watching, she averted her gaze.
In a nearby garden, a small child pointed, “Mummy, what’s wrong with that man?”
His mother followed his gaze. She saw George broken on the ground. Her face softened. She put a hand on her son’s shoulder and turned him gently away. “Nothing, darling. He’s all right. Leave him be.” She knew it was a lie, but some wounds were too naked to look at.
Crowle had sent ninety-six men to the Great War. Eighteen still slept in the Belgian mud. Lucky George, they called him in the pub. They did not understand. Luck was a millstone; a promise made to Tom Davies in the Spetchley stable loft, two stupid boys playing at being men before they knew what it meant. “Tell her I was brave, George.” You promised him you would tell his mother he died clean. A hero. Not like it really was: clawing at the mud, begging for his mother, screaming for a God who wasn’t there.
George pushed himself up from the gravel. He wiped his face with the back of his hand, the grit sticking to his tear-soaked skin. His mother’s voice echoed in his head. “Pull yourself together, George.” An eerie silence filled the air, broken only by the unsteady sound of his breath. The skin between his shoulder blades prickled. He was being watched.
Through blurred eyes, he looked down the road towards the grass trail that led up to the church. No one was there.
He blinked.
There, in the centre of the trail as if it owned it, sat a fox.
Its coat was not the right colour. Not russet, but a matte, depthless black, like a hole cut in the evening light. It did not twitch, did not sniff the air. It focused on him, as deliberate as a gun being raised.
The fox’s head tilted. Not in curiosity, but in assessment. It was the cold, calculating tilt of a predator deciding on a method. Spetchley. You told him you’d tell her. You never did. Madness, or a message? He could no longer tell the difference. The fox blinked, slow and baleful, then traced the hedgerow to the end of Bredicot Lane and slipped into the thick grove.
George stood frozen for a full minute, but the rat from the trenches gnawed at his chest. An unkept promise.
A last, desperate voice, the one that had brought him home from Belgium, screamed inside him. This is not right. Go home. Lock the door.
He closed his eyes. He could smell the trench, feel Tom’s grip on his sleeve. The promise was older than the soldier, deeper than fear. It demanded to be kept. The fox had merely been the messenger.
The promise demanded to be kept.
He took a step. Not left, towards home.
Forwards.
Towards Bredicot Lane. Towards Spetchley. Towards the end of the lie.
✦ ✦ ✦
— continued in Issue One —
© 2026 Black Fox Review · Published by Matatabi Press (Japan Publisher Reg. 910554)
Distributed globally · Available at Barnes & Noble, Waterstones, Kinokuniya, Amazon, and select bookshops
edit@matatabi-japan.com · press@matatabi-japan.com
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